March 19, 2010

Symbols of Sacrifice

The book of Leviticus opens with a string of detailed commandments governing the ritual sacrifices to be performed by the priests in the tabernacle the Israelites built in the desert and later on in Jerusalem. The commandments make up the whole of this week's reading: bring a lamb, bring a cow, bring your turtledoves; the priests will slaughter them, sprinkle their blood on the altar, deal with the organs, burn them, and so forth.

But the sacrificial fires were snuffed out two millennia ago—the Romans saw to that—and won't be rekindled any time soon. In their place, the rabbis gave us prayers: many prayers, recited thrice daily, and special prayers on Sabbaths and festivals. Prayer could not be more different from the flaying of flesh and burning of blood that once represented the pinnacle of Jewish worship. So we can dismiss these commandments as irrelevant to our lives, right?

Not quite so fast. Locked within the biblical sacrifices is a whole world of symbolism, of which our reading touches on but a small portion. Broadly speaking, we may divide the sacrifices into three types: (i) the olah, brought every day and burned completely on the altar; (ii) the hatat, or sin-offering, brought by the owner as atonement for sins and presented to the priests who burn part of it and eat the rest; and (iii) the shlamim, or peace offering, brought mainly on festivals, partly given to God and the priests and partly shared with the owner.

The three types correspond to three modes of relating to God. But since God, as the prophet Isaiah stresses, doesn't really need the sacrifices, they are better seen as corresponding to three different human situations or postures: worship, repentance, and celebration. All have their place in Jewish tradition, and all are central to the kind of spiritual life promoted by the Bible.

In worship, we humans present ourselves in utter humility, recognizing our inconsequence with respect to the magnitude and might of the Creator and the created universe. "What is man," the Psalmist asks (8:4), "that You are mindful of him?" Achieving its ultimate expression on Yom Kippur, worship is the corrective to arrogance, the conceit that the world revolves on our private axis.

In repentance, we recognize that our actions affect our relationship with God. Usually the sin-offering was brought not as a daily, public affair like the olah but to atone for an individual's particular, private sins. Repentance is inherently optimistic, for it assumes that every person can overcome his mistakes and "return" (the literal meaning of teshuvah, or repentance). It also confirms our inherent worth by reminding God that our deeds count.

But where we really shine is in celebration: not so much in expressing optimism for the future as in affirming the present, rejoicing not just in our spiritual wholeness but in the fullness of our beings as living, eating, loving individuals. In celebration we are expansive, generous: "And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you, your son, and your daughter . . . and your stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow" (Deuteronomy 16:11–12). In the Passover seder, the high point of Jewish celebration, the bitter herbs and bread of affliction are quickly eaten and gone, while the wine and pillows and storytelling and song stay with us the whole night.

Many religions, ancient and modern, put their entire emphasis on self-denial. This absolute negation does not square with the Bible's elevation of man, made in the "image" of God. Where other ancient religions encouraged self-mutilation and human sacrifice, the Bible condemns human sacrifice as an abomination and bans all forms of deliberate disfigurement—even tattoos.

Paradoxical as it may sound, Judaism itself can be summed up as a permanent juggling act among the three modes of being. Sometimes the need is to acknowledge the falsehood of our glory, power, and success; at other times, we need to work on our sinful selves; at still others, we join with God in affirming human greatness. If worship and celebration are the poles—glimpses of the absolute, undertaken through fixed rituals at fixed moments—repentance is how we travel between them. A tough balancing act, but for Judaism there is no humanity without it.